1. Roles and stewardship
Clear roles keep measurement comparable across sites without transferring institutional responsibilities that belong at the collaborating site.
- Foundation. Stewards the platform and protocol architecture: the zone protocol framework, the QC criteria model, official dossier and SOP versions, and the hosted collaborator environment.
- Collaborating institution. Owns IRB or ethics review, informed consent, local conduct of measurement, and primary data. Access to Foundation systems is granted after review; it is not automatic.
- Instrument vendors. Remain responsible for device software and hardware. Foundation software complements those instruments; it does not replace them.
2. Data use principles
These principles describe how collaboration data are hosted and seen. A formal data-use agreement, where required by the site, should be consistent with them.
- The collaborating site owns its primary data.
- The Foundation hosts submitted and processed data under governed access for the collaboration; hosting is not a transfer of ownership.
- Collaborators see their own results. Cross-site visibility is limited to de-identified aggregates unless a written agreement provides otherwise.
- External sharing requires explicit written agreement.
- The platform is designed around participant pseudonyms. Direct identifiers are not required for use of the platform.
3. Access
Collaborator access is granted after Foundation review. Submitting a request does not itself provision an account.
- Investigators submit a Collaborator Access Request. The Foundation reviews the request and sends a decision to the institutional email provided.
- Approved collaborators sign in with Microsoft Entra. Assignment to the collaborator environment is required in addition to a successful request.
- Access may be revoked if collaboration terms are violated or the collaboration ends.
4. Authorship and scientific credit
Authorship follows contribution. Foundation staff are not required authors on collaborator papers.
- Software, protocol design, and methods infrastructure may be credited as a Foundation contribution when they materially enable the work. That contribution is citable; it does not displace site scientific credit.
- Data-generating investigators retain scientific credit for the data they collect and for clinical or domain interpretation.
- Authorship and acknowledgment expectations should be discussed before substantive analysis where feasible, and decided by contribution.
5. Protocols, dossiers, and versioning
Official Rex zone criteria and SOPs are versioned and Foundation-maintained so that “Rex-standard” refers to a stated lineage rather than an ad hoc local copy.
- Locked dossiers freeze criteria for a study cycle. Supersession is by a new version, not a silent edit of a locked record.
- Provisional thresholds are labeled provisional. They are working criteria, not validated reliability results.
6. Reliability claims
Platform readiness is not the same as validated measurement coefficients. Scientific claims about reliability require formal validation under a defined analysis plan.
- Formal reliability metrics (including ICC, SEM, MDC, and related coefficients) are not established until a prospective validation study is completed under a defined analysis plan.
- QC gates and readiness materials support process quality. They are not substitutes for peer-reviewed reliability validation and do not imply those coefficients.
- Public and collaborator communications must not imply clinical validation or diagnostic use.
7. Software openness and project identity
The Foundation intends research software to remain inspectable and reusable where appropriate, while keeping official protocol identity distinct from arbitrary forks.
- Official protocol names, dossier versions, and Foundation marks remain stewarded so that “Rex-standard” means Foundation-maintained versions.
- Use of the platform does not transfer ownership of Foundation intellectual property in the architecture, criteria model, or marks.
8. Research use
This site and the collaborator environment are research communication and methods infrastructure. They are not a medical-device user interface, and they are not for diagnosis or treatment decisions.
Collaboration discussions
For collaboration questions, write to info@rexautistikonlabs.org.